Past the shopping district, he came into a more residential area. He advanced slowly, taking care not to miss his turns. This was already his second visit to the house, but he’d gotten lost the first time and didn’t care to repeat the experience. He used landmarks to guide him. The streets in the residential area were even more tangled than the shopping district, with nary a right angle in sight. He sympathized with the local police—the officers on patrol had their work cut out for them.
It was with some relief that he spotted the white tile building illuminated by a streetlamp: the residence of one Osamu Kajimoto.
He pressed the button by the door, and Mrs. Kajimoto answered the intercom as she had earlier that day. He’d known Mr. Kajimoto wouldn’t be home, but he’d dropped by to leave a message and impress her with the importance of his visit.
The front door opened and a skinny man in a short-sleeved polo shirt greeted him. He had big eyes and a long face that made Kusanagi think of horses.
“Mr. Kajimoto? Sorry to bother you this time of the evening.”
“Not at all,” Kajimoto said, welcoming him inside, a curious look on his face. All Kusanagi had told the wife was that he wanted to talk to them about their old company apartment in Oji.
He was led into a living room that was spacious; however, every flat surface was covered in clutter, making the room feel much smaller. Kusanagi complimented them on their nice home.
“It’s falling apart around us,” Kajimoto said, though he didn’t sound displeased. “I’ll have to put some work into it one of these days.”
“You moved here directly from the company apartments?” Kusanagi asked, getting right to it. “How long were you in Oji altogether?”
“Quite some time. Eighteen, nineteen years. We married young.”
“You were in apartment 206, correct? I was wondering if you happen to remember the person living in apartment 305, a Mr. Kawahata?”
“Kawahata?” Kajimoto said, slowly nodding. “Yeah, there was a Kawahata there. You remember him, don’t you?” he asked his wife, who had taken a seat in one of the dining room chairs.
“The Kawahatas lived there almost as long as we did, as I recall,” she said.
“Yeah. They had already been there for five years when we moved in. But he got married late, and was a lot older than us. Mostly you just get the young newlyweds in company housing.”
“According to our records, you overlapped with them about ten years at the apartments. Did you socialize at all?”
Kajimoto folded his arms across his chest and thought. “Well, there was a big cleaning day every year, and occasional apartment meetings, so I saw him there, but we weren’t particularly close.” He turned a curious eye toward Kusanagi. “Um, did something happen to Mr. Kawahata?”
Kusanagi gave a thin smile. “I can’t get into the details, but we’re looking into people who moved from the Oji area to other areas during a certain time frame, and Mr. Kawahata moved during that period.”
“Oh, I see. So you’re not just looking into Mr. Kawahata, then?”
“That’s right. He’s the—” Kusanagi paused to count on his fingers. “—twentieth person I’ve looked into so far, and that’s just me.”
Kajimoto leaned back and shook his head. “Sounds like quite the job, Detective.”
“It’s not all car chases and handcuffs like you see on TV,” Kusanagi agreed. “Anyway, was there anything about Mr. Kawahata that left an impression on you? Any trouble or anyone else in the apartments?”
Kajimoto gave it a moment’s thought, then said, “No, he wasn’t really the kind to start trouble, at least as far as I knew.”
Mrs. Kajimoto frowned and turned to her husband. “Weren’t they the ones who were hardly ever there?”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, I’m sure of it. I remember he got assigned to an office somewhere down south.”
Kajimoto pondered that, then nodded. “Yeah, now that you mention it, that’s right. Mr. Kawahata did get transferred—he was down in Nagoya.”
“Ah, we do have records that say he had been assigned to your company’s Nagoya branch at the time of his retirement.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Kajimoto said, then he laughed. “If you knew that, you could have saved me the trouble and told me, Detective.”
“Sorry, I forgot until your wife mentioned it,” Kusanagi lied. “So it was just his wife and daughter in the apartment most days, with Mr. Kawahata coming home on the weekends, something like that?”
“That sounds about right,” Kajimoto said.
“No, dear, it wasn’t like that,” his wife butted in. “It wasn’t like that at all. You remember.”
“What was it like?” Kusanagi leaned forward.
“Nobody was in their apartment those last one or two years. Not him or his wife or his daughter.”
* * *
It was a little after eight o’clock when Kusanagi finally left the Kajimotos’ house. He thought back over their conversation as he made his way back down the winding streets toward Ekota Station. The biggest surprise of the evening had been the fact that none of the Kawahatas had been living at the apartment for a year or two before they officially moved out.
“It’s not as though they were completely absent,” the wife had told him. “Occasionally I’d see Mrs. Kawahata come in to freshen the place up or pick up some things. I talked to her on one occasion, and she said that they were staying at a friend’s house—something about their friend being overseas on work, so they were watching the house while they were away. She said it was more convenient for them, because the house was much closer to her daughter’s school.”
Kusanagi wanted to know who this friend of theirs was, and where their house was, but Mrs. Kajimoto didn’t know or didn’t remember. She did, however, recall the name of the private school where the Kawahatas’ daughter was going. It was a school for girls, wellknown enough that Kusanagi had heard of it.
He decided that he would pay a visit to the school to check out their yearbooks the following morning. He knew from Yukawa that the Kawahatas’ daughter’s name was Narumi. If he could find some of her classmates, he might be able to find out whose house they had been living in.
He managed to reach the station without getting lost. There was still no word from Utsumi. He was about to call her when his phone rang—but it wasn’t her. He quickly answered. “Kusanagi speaking.”
“Hey,” Director Tatara said in a deep voice. “You have a moment?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I was just meeting with a friend of mine—he’s a regional director from Tsukahara’s last posting.”
“Yes?”
“Well, apparently someone from the prefectural police paid them a visit today. I’m sure you can guess why.”
“They were asking about Tsukahara? Did they want to know if anyone had a grudge against him, something like that?”
“And whether he had ever mentioned Hari Cove, yeah. They’re going down through a list of everyone connected to the victim, looking for loose ends.”
“Something wrong with that?”
“Not with that in particular, but there’s something I don’t get. They weren’t asking anything about Hidetoshi Senba. Do the guys down in Shizuoka not think Senba’s case is important? You told them what I said, right?”
Kusanagi frowned. He hadn’t expected Tatara to get back to them so quickly, nor could he think of a good excuse off the top of his head.
“What?” Tatara said when Kusanagi didn’t immediately reply. “You haven’t told them?”
Kusanagi took a deep breath and said, “No. Not yet, sir.”